I'd been waiting for the grief to find me. I wasn't actively looking for it, I know which memories to poke to feel real pain, but I wanted to create space for it to find me, and throughout the month of August, this year, it couldn't find me. Until today. 30th August. This day is the knife edge. The day, 15 years ago, that Tia still had a heartbeat, still kicked, was on her way. Julie was in (long) labour. On this same day, at some point, her heart gave out, she died before she could take her first breath and the midwives had to tell us that they couldn't find that heartbeat any more. Julie was in labour, so Tia was coming. Except that her delivery at 3am on 31st August would be the other side of our lives. The side we live on today: our derailed and rebuilt lives that exist in now.

So today, the 30th of August, grief wakes me up in the morning. It presses hard downwards on me. And I need it, even if it's just for a day.

15 years didn't fix us, or heal us, time doesn't do that, but it does allow for new memories. For more memories. For life to fill in the space. It's that time, and that life, and our amazing two children who create the life and family we needed. It keeps us busy and it keeps us alive.

We only got one day with Tia, to hold her. Then we had to leave her. Alone in the hospital. That's my memory that's fraught with pain and longing, and all kinds of complicated feelings. For a long time, in those early years, it was a dark memory, a memory I hated myself for, for leaving her. It took a year of therapy to put light into that room again, to not cast judgement on myself, to leave the memory as it is. Just that one day. The one day that she was real.

But that's why I write these post each year. It's why I write this for myself, and in part to share with you. Tia is a memory to me, but she was real. I have to write about that to bring her existence into reality, into the world I still inhabit.

I was worried this year I wouldn't find the words, that the grief wouldn't find me. I know that there's an instinct in me to shove the grief away, to busy myself, but I also know that every other day of the year can do that with no effort at all. The little one starting secondary, the big one starting his options, new achievements, new problems, new arguments, new memories. So, I'll try my best to sit in the grief today. Share it with Julie, and try to be gentle on ourselves.

And I'll remember Tia today.